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      Study: Global deforestation leads to more mercury pollution

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      About 10 percent of human-made mercury emissions into the atmosphere each year are the result of global deforestation, according to a new MIT study.

      The world’s vegetation, from the Amazon rainforest to the savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa, acts as a sink that removes the toxic pollutant from the air. However, if the current rate of deforestation remains unchanged or accelerates, the researchers estimate that net mercury emissions will keep increasing.

      “We’ve been overlooking a significant source of mercury, especially in tropical regions,” says Ari Feinberg, a former postdoc in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) and lead author of the study.

      The researchers’ model shows that the Amazon rainforest plays a particularly important role as a mercury sink, contributing about 30 percent of the global land sink. Curbing Amazon deforestation could thus have a substantial impact on reducing mercury pollution.

      The team also estimates that global reforestation efforts could increase annual mercury uptake by about 5 percent. While this is significant, the researchers emphasize that reforestation alone should not be a substitute for worldwide pollution control efforts.

      “Countries have put a lot of effort into reducing mercury emissions, especially northern industrialized countries, and for very good reason. But 10 percent of the global anthropogenic source is substantial, and there is a potential for that to be even greater in the future. [Addressing these deforestation-related emissions] needs to be part of the solution,” says senior author Noelle Selin, a professor in IDSS and MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

      Feinberg and Selin are joined on the paper by co-authors Martin Jiskra, a former Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione Fellow at the University of Basel; Pasquale Borrelli, a professor at Roma Tre University in Italy; and Jagannath Biswakarma, a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology. The paper appears today in Environmental Science and Technology.

      Modeling mercury

      Over the past few decades, scientists have generally focused on studying deforestation as a source of global carbon dioxide emissions. Mercury, a trace element, hasn’t received the same attention, partly because the terrestrial biosphere’s role in the global mercury cycle has only recently been better quantified.

      Plant leaves take up mercury from the atmosphere, in a similar way as they take up carbon dioxide. But unlike carbon dioxide, mercury doesn’t play an essential biological function for plants. Mercury largely stays within a leaf until it falls to the forest floor, where the mercury is absorbed by the soil.

      Mercury becomes a serious concern for humans if it ends up in water bodies, where it can become methylated by microorganisms. Methylmercury, a potent neurotoxin, can be taken up by fish and bioaccumulated through the food chain. This can lead to risky levels of methylmercury in the fish humans eat.

      “In soils, mercury is much more tightly bound than it would be if it were deposited in the ocean. The forests are doing a sort of ecosystem service, in that they are sequestering mercury for longer timescales,” says Feinberg, who is now a postdoc in the Blas Cabrera Institute of Physical Chemistry in Spain.

      In this way, forests reduce the amount of toxic methylmercury in oceans.

      Many studies of mercury focus on industrial sources, like burning fossil fuels, small-scale gold mining, and metal smelting. A global treaty, the 2013 Minamata Convention, calls on nations to reduce human-made emissions. However, it doesn’t directly consider impacts of deforestation.

      The researchers launched their study to fill in that missing piece.

      In past work, they had built a model to probe the role vegetation plays in mercury uptake. Using a series of land use change scenarios, they adjusted the model to quantify the role of deforestation.

      Evaluating emissions

      This chemical transport model tracks mercury from its emissions sources to where it is chemically transformed in the atmosphere and then ultimately to where it is deposited, mainly through rainfall or uptake into forest ecosystems.

      They divided the Earth into eight regions and performed simulations to calculate deforestation emissions factors for each, considering elements like type and density of vegetation, mercury content in soils, and historical land use.

      However, good data for some regions were hard to come by.

      They lacked measurements from tropical Africa or Southeast Asia — two areas that experience heavy deforestation. To get around this gap, they used simpler, offline models to simulate hundreds of scenarios, which helped them improve their estimations of potential uncertainties.

      They also developed a new formulation for mercury emissions from soil. This formulation captures the fact that deforestation reduces leaf area, which increases the amount of sunlight that hits the ground and accelerates the outgassing of mercury from soils.

      The model divides the world into grid squares, each of which is a few hundred square kilometers. By changing land surface and vegetation parameters in certain squares to represent deforestation and reforestation scenarios, the researchers can capture impacts on the mercury cycle.

      Overall, they found that about 200 tons of mercury are emitted to the atmosphere as the result of deforestation, or about 10 percent of total human-made emissions. But in tropical and sub-tropical countries, deforestation emissions represent a higher percentage of total emissions. For example, in Brazil deforestation emissions are 40 percent of total human-made emissions.

      In addition, people often light fires to prepare tropical forested areas for agricultural activities, which causes more emissions by releasing mercury stored by vegetation.

      “If deforestation was a country, it would be the second highest emitting country, after China, which emits around 500 tons of mercury a year,” Feinberg adds.

      And since the Minamata Convention is now addressing primary mercury emissions, scientists can expect deforestation to become a larger fraction of human-made emissions in the future.

      “Policies to protect forests or cut them down have unintended effects beyond their target. It is important to consider the fact that these are systems, and they involve human activities, and we need to understand them better in order to actually solve the problems that we know are out there,” Selin says.

      By providing this first estimate, the team hopes to inspire more research in this area.

      In the future, they want to incorporate more dynamic Earth system models into their analysis, which would enable them to interactively track mercury uptake and better model the timescale of vegetation regrowth.

      “This paper represents an important advance in our understanding of global mercury cycling by quantifying a pathway that has long been suggested but not yet quantified. Much of our research to date has focused on primary anthropogenic emissions — those directly resulting from human activity via coal combustion or mercury-gold amalgam burning in artisanal and small-scale gold mining,” says Jackie Gerson, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Michigan State University, who was not involved with this research. “This research shows that deforestation can also result in substantial mercury emissions and needs to be considered both in terms of global mercury models and land management policies. It therefore has the potential to advance our field scientifically as well as to promote policies that reduce mercury emissions via deforestation.

      This work was funded, in part, by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology. More

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      Letter to the MIT community: Announcing the Climate Project at MIT

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      The following letter was sent to the MIT community today by President Sally Kornbluth.

      Dear members of the MIT community,

      At my inauguration, echoing a sentiment I heard everywhere on my campus listening tour, I called on the people of MIT to come together in new ways to marshal a bold, tenacious response to the run-away crisis of climate change.

      I write with an update on how we’re bringing this vision to life.

      This letter includes several significant announcements – including an accelerated search for faculty leaders and a very substantial commitment of MIT funds – so please read on.

      A Record of MIT Leadership

      Since the late Professor Jule Charney led a 1979 National Academy of Sciences report that foretold the likely risks of global warming, MIT researchers have made pioneering contributions in countless relevant fields. Today, more than 300 faculty, working with their students and research and teaching staff, are engaged in leading-edge work on climate issues. The Institute has also taken important steps to enhance climate education, expand public outreach on climate and decarbonize the campus.

      But – as the community told me loud and clear – this moment demands a different order of speed, ambition, focus and scale.

      The Climate Project at MIT

      After extensive consultation with more than 150 faculty and senior researchers across the Institute – and building on the strengths of Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade, issued in 2021 – Vice Provost Richard Lester has led us in framing a new approach: the Climate Project at MIT.  

      Representing a compelling new strategy for accelerated, university-led innovation, the Climate Project at MIT will focus our community’s talent and resources on solving critical climate problems with all possible speed – and will connect us with a range of partners to deliver those technological, behavioral and policy solutions to the world.

      As Richard explains in this MIT News 3Q, the Climate Project at MIT is still in its early stages; as it gains new leaders and new allies from academia, industry, philanthropy and government, it will continue to be shaped by their insight and expertise.

      For now, we begin with a new structure and strategy for organizing the work. The Climate Project at MIT will consist of three interlocking elements:

      The Climate Missions
      The Climate Frontier projects
      The Climate HQ

      To learn more about these components, I encourage you to read this summary of the plan (PDF). 

      Recruiting Leaders for the Six Climate Missions

      The central focus will be six Climate Missions – each constituting a cross-disciplinary Institute-wide problem-solving community focused on a strategic area of the climate challenge:

      Decarbonizing Energy and Industry
      Restoring the Atmosphere, Protecting the Land and Oceans
      Empowering Frontline Communities
      Building and Adapting Healthy, Resilient Cities
      Inventing New Policy Approaches
      Wild Cards

      We’re now recruiting an MIT faculty leader for each of these missions – on an accelerated timeline. We welcome any interested faculty member to apply to be a Climate Mission leader or to nominate a colleague. Please submit your CV and statement of interest at climatesearch@mit.edu by February 22.

      You can learn more about the role on the Climate Project’s preliminary webpage. All submissions will be treated as confidential.

      A New Leadership Role, a Search Committee – and Significant MIT Resources

      The Climate Project at MIT is gathering steam – and we will build its momentum with these three important steps.

      1. Vice President for Climate

      To match the prime importance of this work, we have created a new leadership role, reporting to me: Vice President for Climate (VPC). The VPC will oversee the Climate Project at MIT, take the lead on fundraising and implementation, and shape its strategic vision. We are opening the search now and welcome candidates from inside and outside MIT. You may submit your CV and statement of interest in the VPC role at climatesearch@mit.edu. A formal job description will be posted soon.

      2. Climate Search Advisory Committee

      To advise me in selecting the six mission leaders and the VPC, I have appointed the following faculty members to serve on the Climate Search Advisory Committee:

      Richard Lester, Chair
      Daron Acemoglu
      Yet-Ming Chiang
      Penny Chisholm
      Dava Newman
      Ron Rivest
      Susan Solomon
      John Sterman
      Larry Vale
      Rob van der Hilst
      Anne White

      3. $75 million in support from the Institute and MIT Sloan

      And finally: We will jumpstart the Climate Project at MIT with a commitment of $50 million in Institute resources – the largest direct investment the Institute has ever made in funding climate work, and just the beginning of a far more ambitious effort to raise the funds this extraordinary challenge demands. In addition, the Sloan School will contribute $25 million to endow a new climate policy center, to be formally announced in the coming days. Together, these funds will allow for early advances and express the seriousness of our intentions to potential partners around the world.

      *    *    *

      The Climate Project at MIT is ambitious, multifaceted and more complex than I could capture in a letter; I urge you to explore the summary of the plan (PDF) to see where you might fit. There will be a place for everyone, including all of our existing climate-involved DLCs. (And you might enjoy this brief video, which celebrates MIT’s distinctive gift for collaborative problem-solving on a grand scale.)

      At last spring’s inauguration, I said I hoped that, a decade hence, all of us at MIT could take pride in having “helped lead a powerful cross-sector coalition and placed big bets on big solutions, to dramatically accelerate progress against climate change.”

      With your creativity, support and drive, we have every reason to hope that the Climate Project at MIT can make that aspiration real.

      With enthusiasm and anticipation,

      Sally Kornbluth More

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      in Environment

      Illustrating India’s complex environmental crises

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      Abhijit Banerjee, the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT, and Sarnath Banerjee (no relation), an MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST) visiting artist share a similar background, but have very different ways of thinking. Both were raised for a time in Kolkata before leaving India to pursue divergent careers, Abhijit as an economist who went on to win the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (an award he shares with MIT Professor Esther Duflo and Harvard University Professor Michael Kremer), and Sarnath as a visual artist and graphic novelist. 

      The two collaborated on a pair of short films, “The Land of Good Intentions” and “The Eternal Swamp,” that blend their expertise in a unique and captivating form. Each film addresses a particular environmental crisis facing present-day India by tracing its origins back through the centuries. The films are presented in a kind of lecture style, with Abhijit appearing as the narrator, unraveling historical details, as graphics by Sarnath visualize the story with an often wry and easy wit. The results apply logic and narrative coherence to problems with complex roots in the forces of nature, economics, and local culture. 

      “The Land of Good Intentions” explores the conditions and policies that led to mass protests by farmers, in Punjab and elsewhere, following the passage of farming legislation in September 2020. The film begins by providing historical context from multiple angles, including the significance of rice to regional culture, its growing conditions (which require a lot of water), the region’s climate (which produces very little), and previous government subsidies that led to its overproduction. The 2020 Farm Bills were intended to address rice overproduction and its consequences, including the depletion of Punjab’s groundwater supply, pollution from the burning of rice stalks, and a surplus going to waste. But farmers considered that they were being asked to shoulder the costs of a problem the government created. 

      “The arguments in the film don’t necessarily align with popular liberal arguments, but it gives subtler shape and layers to them,” Sarnath says. “That dialectical way of thinking is important to the liberal movement, which is driven by passion and a sense of justice. Abhijit is driven by factual analysis, which sometimes makes the argument more complex.”

      Their second film, “The Eternal Swamp,” addresses the crisis of flooding in Kolkata and its causes in the geographical and economic development of the city from the start. Because Kolkata was built on very wet land, and real estate has long been one of the only viable industries in the city, it has been developed without regard to proper drainage in a climate that produces more rainfall than it can handle. There is a pervading sense that Kolkata will eventually be entirely below water.

      “It was a good collaboration from the beginning,” Sarnath says of working with Abhijit on the CAST Visiting Artist project, a process which began just before Abhijit was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2019 and continued through the pandemic. “Both of us work on instinct, but the way he shapes an argument is very different from me,” Sarnath says. “My work does not follow a linear approach to telling a story; it’s fragmentary, driven by mood and emotion more than narrative, like composing a piece of music.”

      Since they first met at a literary conference years ago, Abhijit and Sarnath have been close friends and intellectual sparring partners. Though Sarnath is based in Berlin and Abhijit in Boston, the two often cross paths in different locales and have long, ambling discussions that traverse a wide array of topics. “We spend a lot of time walking together wherever we find ourselves, whether it’s down the Longfellow Bridge in Boston or through Delhi or Kolkata,” Sarnath says. The idea for this project was born out of such conversations, in response to pressing events in their home country. 

      Abhijit wrote a proposal to MIT CAST, and the questions they received through the process helped them further shape the project. “It’s important, when you have the luxury, just to spend time together. Thanks to MIT, we managed to do that across continents,” Sarnath says of their creative process. “It’s more than just telling a story; Abhijit unpacked what was in his head, and I drew and wrote a bit as well,” Sarnath says. And they worked with the editor and animator Niusha Ramzani, whom Sarnath says lent an Iranian aesthetic to the film’s animations. 

      As for the format of the films, they wanted to capture the sense of a serene Bengali afternoon, with Abhijit seated in his home in Kolkata speaking in a relaxed tone. “We wanted it to be a bit like a Royal Society lecture,” Sarnath says, somewhat like a TED Talk but more personable and intimate. The aim was to make their complicated subjects more easily comprehensible, through the language of Abhijit’s narration and with the help of visual metaphors. Still, they did not want to sacrifice complexity.

      “Economists are fabulists,” says Abhijit Banerjee. “We tell stories, simple stories, but that tends to get obscured in the telling, often because we like to be very careful about not overstating our case. Irony and the kind of playful humor that Sarnath brings to narration seemed to offer a different way to avoid being too emphatic, while allowing the story to be told in a way that it reaches a much larger audience. What is brilliant about Sarnath’s work is the play between reliable and the unreliable — the readers are happy to be misdirected because they know that it will ultimately lead them where they want to be. I was hoping we could bring a little of that into economics.” 

      “You have to emancipate yourself from any one definitive answer,” Sarnath Banerjee says, describing Abhijit’s expansive way of thinking, through which he follows multiple thought processes to their logical conclusions. The result allows for ambiguity and contradiction, though the pathways of thinking are clear. The films illustrate the situations facing farmers in Punjab and the waterlogged streets of Kolkata by tracing their roots and examining the history of cause and effect. The results provide clarity, but no simple answers.

      The process was an enriching one for both of them, the kind of advancement in understanding that can only come in dialogue. “With each collaboration, you learn, and learning to me is an artistic form,” Sarnath says. “We are always learning.” More

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      in Environment

      Susan Solomon wins VinFuture Award for Female Innovators

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      Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies Susan Solomon has been awarded the 2023 VinFuture Award for Female Innovators. Solomon was picked out of almost 1,400 international nominations across four categories for “The discovery of the ozone depletion mechanism in Antarctica, contributing to the establishment of the Montreal Protocol.” The award, which comes with a $500,000 prize, highlights outstanding female researchers and innovators that can serve as role models for aspiring scientists.

      “I’m tremendously humbled by that, and I’ll do my best to live up to it,” says Solomon, who attended the ceremony in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Dec. 20.

      The VinFuture Awards are given annually to “honor scientific research and breakthrough technological innovations that can make a significant difference” according to their site. In addition to Female Innovators, the award has two other special categories, Innovators from Developing Countries and Innovators with Outstanding Achievements in Emerging Fields, as well as their overall grand prize. The awards have been given out by the Vietnam-based VinFuture Foundation since 2021.

      “Countries all around the world are part of scientific progress and innovation, and that a developing country is honoring that is really very lovely,” says Solomon, whose career as an atmospheric chemist has brought her onto the international stage and has shown her firsthand how important developing countries are in crafting global policy.

      In 1986 Solomon led an expedition of 16 scientists to Antarctica to measure the degradation of the ozone layer; she was the only woman on the team. She and her collaborators were able to figure out the atmospheric chemistry of chlorofluorocarbons and other similar chemicals that are now known as ozone-depleting substances. This work became foundational to the creation of the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement that banned damaging chemicals and has allowed the ozone to recover.

      Solomon joined the MIT faculty in 2012 and holds joint appointments in the departments of Chemistry and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. The success of the Montreal Protocol demonstrates the ability for international cooperation to enact effective environmental agreements; Solomon sees it as a blueprint for crafting further policy when it comes to addressing global climate change.

      “Women can do anything, even help save the ozone layer and solve other environmental problems,” she says. “Today’s problem of climate change is for all of us to be involved in solving.” More

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      in Environment

      Q&A: A blueprint for sustainable innovation

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      Atacama Biomaterials is a startup combining architecture, machine learning, and chemical engineering to create eco-friendly materials with multiple applications. Passionate about sustainable innovation, its co-founder Paloma Gonzalez-Rojas SM ’15, PhD ’21 highlights here how MIT has supported the project through several of its entrepreneurship initiatives, and reflects on the role of design in building a holistic vision for an expanding business.

      Q: What role do you see your startup playing in the sustainable materials space?

      A: Atacama Biomaterials is a venture dedicated to advancing sustainable materials through state-of-the-art technology. With my co-founder Jose Tomas Dominguez, we have been working on developing our technology since 2019. We initially started the company in 2020 under another name and received Sandbox funds the next year. In 2021, we went through The Engine’s accelerator, Blueprint, and changed our name to Atacama Biomaterials in 2022 during the MITdesignX program. 

      This technology we have developed allows us to create our own data and material library using artificial intelligence and machine learning, and serves as a platform applicable to various industries horizontally — biofuels, biological drugs, and even mining. Vertically, we produce inexpensive, regionally sourced, and environmentally friendly bio-based polymers and packaging — that is, naturally compostable plastics as a flagship product, along with AI products.

      Q: What motivated you to venture into biomaterials and found Atacama?

      A: I’m from Chile, a country with a beautiful, rich geography and nature where we can see all the problems stemming from industry, waste management, and pollution. We named our company Atacama Biomaterials because the Atacama Desert in Chile — one of the places where you can best see the stars in the world — is becoming a plastic dump, as many other places on Earth. I care deeply about sustainability, and I have an emotional attachment to stop these problems. Considering that manufacturing accounts for 29 percent of global carbon emissions, it is clear that sustainability has a role in how we define technology and entrepreneurship, as well as a socio-economic dimension.

      When I first came to MIT, it was to develop software in the Department of Architecture’s Design and Computation Group, with MIT professors Svafa Gronfeldt as co-advisor and Regina Barzilay as committee member. During my PhD, I studied machine-learning methods simulating pedestrian motion to understand how people move in space. In my work, I would use lots of plastics for 3D printing and I couldn’t stop thinking about sustainability and climate change, so I reached out to material science and mechanical engineering professors to look into biopolymers and degradable bio-based materials. This is how I met my co-founder, as we were both working with MIT Professor Neil Gershenfeld. Together, we were part of one of the first teams in the world to 3D print wood fibers, which is difficult — it’s slow and expensive — and quickly pivoted to sustainable packaging. 

      I then won a fellowship from MCSC [the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium], which gave me freedom to explore further, and I eventually got a postdoc in MIT chemical engineering, guided by MIT Professor Gregory Rutledge, a polymer physicist. This was unexpected in my career path. Winning Nucleate Eco Track 2022 and the MITdesignX Innovation Award in 2022 profiled Atacama Biomaterials as one of the rising startups in Boston’s biotechnology and climate-tech scene.

      Q: What is your process to develop new biomaterials?

      A: My PhD research, coupled with my background in material development and molecular dynamics, sparked the realization that principles I studied simulating pedestrian motion could also apply to molecular engineering. This connection may seem unconventional, but for me, it was a natural progression. Early in my career, I developed an intuition for materials, understanding their mechanics and physics.

      Using my experience and skills, and leveraging machine learning as a technology jump, I applied a similar conceptual framework to simulate the trajectories of molecules and find potential applications in biomaterials. Making that parallel and shift was amazing. It allowed me to optimize a state-of-the-art molecular dynamic software to run twice as fast as more traditional technologies through my algorithm presented at the International Conference of Machine Learning this year. This is very important, because this kind of simulation usually takes a week, so narrowing it down to two days has major implications for scientists and industry, in material science, chemical engineering, computer science and related fields. Such work greatly influenced the foundation of Atacama Biomaterials, where we developed our own AI to deploy our materials. In an effort to mitigate the environmental impact of manufacturing, Atacama is targeting a 16.7 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions associated with the manufacturing process of its polymers, through the use of renewable energy. 

      Another thing is that I was trained as an architect in Chile, and my degree had a design component. I think design allows me to understand problems at a very high level, and how things interconnect. It contributed to developing a holistic vision for Atacama, because it allowed me to jump from one technology or discipline to another and understand broader applications on a conceptual level. Our design approach also meant that sustainability came to the center of our work from the very beginning, not just a plus or an added cost.

      Q: What was the role of MITdesignX in Atacama’s development?

      A: I have known Svafa Grönfeldt, MITdesignX’s faculty director, for almost six years. She was the co-advisor of my PhD, and we had a mentor-mentee relationship. I admire the fact that she created a space for people interested in business and entrepreneurship to grow within the Department of Architecture. She and Executive Director Gilad Rosenzweig gave us fantastic advice, and we received significant support from mentors. For example, Daniel Tsai helped us with intellectual property, including a crucial patent for Atacama. And we’re still in touch with the rest of the cohort. I really like this “design your company” approach, which I find quite unique, because it gives us the opportunity to reflect on who we want to be as designers, technologists, and entrepreneurs. Studying user insights also allowed us to understand the broad applicability of our research, and align our vision with market demands, ultimately shaping Atacama into a company with a holistic perspective on sustainable material development.

      Q: How does Atacama approach scaling, and what are the immediate next steps for the company?

      A: When I think about accomplishing our vision, I feel really inspired by my 3-year-old daughter. I want her to experience a world with trees and wildlife when she’s 100 years old, and I hope Atacama will contribute to such a future.

      Going back to the designer’s perspective, we designed the whole process holistically, from feedstock to material development, incorporating AI and advanced manufacturing. Having proved that there is a demand for the materials we are developing, and having tested our products, manufacturing process, and technology in critical environments, we are now ready to scale. Our level of technology-readiness is comparable to the one used by NASA (level 4).

      We have proof of concept: a biodegradable and recyclable packaging material which is cost- and energy-efficient as a clean energy enabler in large-scale manufacturing. We have received pre-seed funding, and are sustainably scaling by taking advantage of available resources around the world, like repurposing machinery from the paper industry. As presented in the MIT Industrial Liaison and STEX Program’s recent Sustainability Conference, unlike our competitors, we have cost-parity with current packaging materials, as well as low-energy processes. And we also proved the demand for our products, which was an important milestone. Our next steps involve strategically expanding our manufacturing capabilities and research facilities and we are currently evaluating building a factory in Chile and establishing an R&D lab plus a manufacturing plant in the U.S. More

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      in Environment

      New tool predicts flood risk from hurricanes in a warming climate

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      Coastal cities and communities will face more frequent major hurricanes with climate change in the coming years. To help prepare coastal cities against future storms, MIT scientists have developed a method to predict how much flooding a coastal community is likely to experience as hurricanes evolve over the next decades.

      When hurricanes make landfall, strong winds whip up salty ocean waters that generate storm surge in coastal regions. As the storms move over land, torrential rainfall can induce further flooding inland. When multiple flood sources such as storm surge and rainfall interact, they can compound a hurricane’s hazards, leading to significantly more flooding than would result from any one source alone. The new study introduces a physics-based method for predicting how the risk of such complex, compound flooding may evolve under a warming climate in coastal cities.

      One example of compound flooding’s impact is the aftermath from Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The storm made landfall on the East Coast of the United States as heavy winds whipped up a towering storm surge that combined with rainfall-driven flooding in some areas to cause historic and devastating floods across New York and New Jersey.

      In their study, the MIT team applied the new compound flood-modeling method to New York City to predict how climate change may influence the risk of compound flooding from Sandy-like hurricanes over the next decades.  

      They found that, in today’s climate, a Sandy-level compound flooding event will likely hit New York City every 150 years. By midcentury, a warmer climate will drive up the frequency of such flooding, to every 60 years. At the end of the century, destructive Sandy-like floods will deluge the city every 30 years — a fivefold increase compared to the present climate.

      “Long-term average damages from weather hazards are usually dominated by the rare, intense events like Hurricane Sandy,” says study co-author Kerry Emanuel, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at MIT. “It is important to get these right.”

      While these are sobering projections, the researchers hope the flood forecasts can help city planners prepare and protect against future disasters. “Our methodology equips coastal city authorities and policymakers with essential tools to conduct compound flooding risk assessments from hurricanes in coastal cities at a detailed, granular level, extending to each street or building, in both current and future decades,” says study author Ali Sarhadi, a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

      The team’s open-access study appears online today in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Co-authors include Raphaël Rousseau-Rizzi at MIT’s Lorenz Center, Kyle Mandli at Columbia University, Jeffrey Neal at the University of Bristol, Michael Wiper at the Charles III University of Madrid, and Monika Feldmann at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne.

      The seeds of floods

      To forecast a region’s flood risk, weather modelers typically look to the past. Historical records contain measurements of previous hurricanes’ wind speeds, rainfall, and spatial extent, which scientists use to predict where and how much flooding may occur with coming storms. But Sarhadi believes that the limitations and brevity of these historical records are insufficient for predicting future hurricanes’ risks.

      “Even if we had lengthy historical records, they wouldn’t be a good guide for future risks because of climate change,” he says. “Climate change is changing the structural characteristics, frequency, intensity, and movement of hurricanes, and we cannot rely on the past.”

      Sarhadi and his colleagues instead looked to predict a region’s risk of hurricane flooding in a changing climate using a physics-based risk assessment methodology. They first paired simulations of hurricane activity with coupled ocean and atmospheric models over time. With the hurricane simulations, developed originally by Emanuel, the researchers virtually scatter tens of thousands of “seeds” of hurricanes into a simulated climate. Most seeds dissipate, while a few grow into category-level storms, depending on the conditions of the ocean and atmosphere.

      When the team drives these hurricane simulations with climate models of ocean and atmospheric conditions under certain global temperature projections, they can see how hurricanes change, for instance in terms of intensity, frequency, and size, under past, current, and future climate conditions.

      The team then sought to precisely predict the level and degree of compound flooding from future hurricanes in coastal cities. The researchers first used rainfall models to simulate rain intensity for a large number of simulated hurricanes, then applied numerical models to hydraulically translate that rainfall intensity into flooding on the ground during landfalling of hurricanes, given information about a region such as its surface and topography characteristics. They also simulated the same hurricanes’ storm surges, using hydrodynamic models to translate hurricanes’ maximum wind speed and sea level pressure into surge height in coastal areas. The simulation further assessed the propagation of ocean waters into coastal areas, causing coastal flooding.

      Then, the team developed a numerical hydrodynamic model to predict how two sources of hurricane-induced flooding, such as storm surge and rain-driven flooding, would simultaneously interact through time and space, as simulated hurricanes make landfall in coastal regions such as New York City, in both current and future climates.  

      “There’s a complex, nonlinear hydrodynamic interaction between saltwater surge-driven flooding and freshwater rainfall-driven flooding, that forms compound flooding that a lot of existing methods ignore,” Sarhadi says. “As a result, they underestimate the risk of compound flooding.”

      Amplified risk

      With their flood-forecasting method in place, the team applied it to a specific test case: New York City. They used the multipronged method to predict the city’s risk of compound flooding from hurricanes, and more specifically from Sandy-like hurricanes, in present and future climates. Their simulations showed that the city’s odds of experiencing Sandy-like flooding will increase significantly over the next decades as the climate warms, from once every 150 years in the current climate, to every 60 years by 2050, and every 30 years by 2099.

      Interestingly, they found that much of this increase in risk has less to do with how hurricanes themselves will change with warming climates, but with how sea levels will increase around the world.

      “In future decades, we will experience sea level rise in coastal areas, and we also incorporated that effect into our models to see how much that would increase the risk of compound flooding,” Sarhadi explains. “And in fact, we see sea level rise is playing a major role in amplifying the risk of compound flooding from hurricanes in New York City.”

      The team’s methodology can be applied to any coastal city to assess the risk of compound flooding from hurricanes and extratropical storms. With this approach, Sarhadi hopes decision-makers can make informed decisions regarding the implementation of adaptive measures, such as reinforcing coastal defenses to enhance infrastructure and community resilience.

      “Another aspect highlighting the urgency of our research is the projected 25 percent increase in coastal populations by midcentury, leading to heightened exposure to damaging storms,” Sarhadi says. “Additionally, we have trillions of dollars in assets situated in coastal flood-prone areas, necessitating proactive strategies to reduce damages from compound flooding from hurricanes under a warming climate.”

      This research was supported, in part, by Homesite Insurance. More

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      in Environment

      K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research Center will prioritize innovations for resource-constrained communities

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      Billions of people worldwide face threats to their livelihood, health, and well-being due to poverty. These problems persist because solutions offered in developed countries often do not meet the requirements — related to factors like price, performance, usability, robustness, and culture — of poor or developing countries. Academic labs frequently try to tackle these challenges, but often to no avail because they lack real-world, on-the-ground knowledge from key stakeholders, and because they do not have an efficient, reliable means of converting breakthroughs to real-world impact.

      The new K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) Center at MIT, founded with a $28 million gift from philanthropist and investor Lisa Yang, aims to rethink how products and technologies for resource-constrained communities are conceived, designed, and commercialized. A collaboration between MIT’s School of Engineering and School of Science, the Yang GEAR Center will bring together a multidisciplinary team of MIT researchers to assess today’s most pressing global challenges in three critical areas: global health, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and the water-energy-food nexus.

      “As she has shown over and over through her philanthropy, Lisa Yang shares MIT’s passion for connecting fundamental research and real-world data to create positive impact,” says MIT president Sally Kornbluth. “I’m grateful for her powerful vision and incredible generosity in founding the K. Lisa Yang GEAR Center. I can’t imagine a better use of MIT’s talents than working to improve the lives and health of people around the world.”

      Yang’s gift expands her exceptional philanthropic support of human health and basic science research at MIT over the past six years. Yang GEAR Center will join MIT’s Yang Tan Collective, an assemblage of six major research centers focused on accelerating collaboration in basic science, research, and engineering to realize translational strategies that improve human health and well-being at a global scale.

      “Billions of people face daily life-or-death challenges that could be improved with elegant technologies,” says Yang. “And yet I’ve learned how many products and tools created by top engineers don’t make it out of the lab. They may look like clever ideas during the prototype phase, but they are entirely ill-suited to the communities they were designed for. I am very excited about the potential of a deliberate and thoughtful engineering effort that will prioritize the design of technologies for use in impoverished communities.”

      Cost, material availability, cultural suitability, and other market mismatches hinder many major innovations in global health, food, and water from being translated to use in resource-constrained communities. Yang GEAR Center will support a major research and design program with its mission to strategically identify compelling challenges and associated scientific knowledge gaps in resource-constrained communities then address them through academic innovation to create and translate transformative technologies.

      The center will be led by Amos Winter, associate professor of mechanical engineering, whose lab focuses on creating technologies that marry innovative, low-cost design with an in-depth understanding of the unique socioeconomic constraints of emerging markets.

      “Academia has a key role to play in solving the historically unsolvable challenges in resource-constrained communities,” says Winter. “However, academic research is often disconnected from the real-world requirements that must be satisfied to make meaningful change. Yang GEAR Center will be a catalyst for innovation to impact by helping colleagues identify compelling problems and focus their talents on realizing real-world solutions, and by providing mechanisms for commercial dissemination. I am extremely grateful to find in Lisa a partner who shares a vision for how academic research can play a more efficient and targeted role in addressing the needs of the world’s most disadvantaged populations.”

      The backbone of the Yang GEAR Center will be a team of seasoned research scientists and engineers. These individuals will scout real-world problems and distill the relevant research questions then help assemble collaborative teams. As projects develop, center staff will mentor students, build and conduct field pilots, and foster relationships with stakeholders around the world. They will be strategically positioned to translate technology at the end of projects through licensing and startups. Center staff and collaborators will focus on creating products and services for climate-driven migrants, such as solar-powered energy and water networks; technologies for reducing atmospheric carbon and promoting the hydrogen economy; brackish water desalination and irrigation solutions; and high-performance, global health diagnostics and devices.

      For instance, a Yang GEAR Center team focused on creating water-saving and solar-powered irrigation solutions for farmers in the Middle East and North Africa will continue its work in the region. They will conduct exploratory research; build a team of stakeholders, including farmers, agricultural outreach organizations, irrigation hardware manufacturers, retailers, water and agriculture scientists, and local government officials; design, rigorously test, and iterate prototypes both in the lab and in the field; and conduct large-scale field trials to garner user feedback and pave the way to product commercialization.

      “Grounded in foundational scientific research and blended with excellence in the humanities, MIT provides a framework that integrates people, economics, research, and innovation. By incorporating multiple perspectives — and being attentive to the needs and cultures of the people who will ultimately rely on research outcomes — MIT can have the greatest impact in areas of health, climate science, and resource security,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the School of Science and the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics.

      An overarching aim for the center will be to educate graduates who are global engineers, designers, and researchers positioned for a career of addressing compelling, high-impact challenges. The center includes four endowed Hock E. Tan GEAR Center Fellowships that will support graduate students and/or postdoctoral fellows eager to enter the field of global engineering. The fellowships are named for MIT alumnus and Broadcom CEO Hock E. Tan ’75 SM ’75.

      “I am thrilled that the Yang GEAR Center is taking a leading role in training problem-solvers who will rethink how products and inventions can help communities facing the most pressing challenges of our time,” adds Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “These talented young students,  postdocs, and staff have the potential to reach across disciplines — and across the globe — to truly transform the impact engineering can have in the future.” More

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      in Environment

      Researchers release open-source space debris model

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      MIT’s Astrodynamics, Space Robotics, and Controls Laboratory (ARCLab) announced the public beta release of the MIT Orbital Capacity Assessment Tool (MOCAT) during the 2023 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Space Forum Workshop on Dec. 14. MOCAT enables users to model the long-term future space environment to understand growth in space debris and assess the effectiveness of debris-prevention mechanisms.

      With the escalating congestion in low Earth orbit, driven by a surge in satellite deployments, the risk of collisions and space debris proliferation is a pressing concern. Conducting thorough space environment studies is critical for developing effective strategies for fostering responsible and sustainable use of space resources. 

      MOCAT stands out among orbital modeling tools for its capability to model individual objects, diverse parameters, orbital characteristics, fragmentation scenarios, and collision probabilities. With the ability to differentiate between object categories, generalize parameters, and offer multi-fidelity computations, MOCAT emerges as a versatile and powerful tool for comprehensive space environment analysis and management.

      MOCAT is intended to provide an open-source tool to empower stakeholders including satellite operators, regulators, and members of the public to make data-driven decisions. The ARCLab team has been developing these models for the last several years, recognizing that the lack of open-source implementation of evolutionary modeling tools limits stakeholders’ ability to develop consensus on actions to help improve space sustainability. This beta release is intended to allow users to experiment with the tool and provide feedback to help guide further development.

      Richard Linares, the principal investigator for MOCAT and an MIT associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics, expresses excitement about the tool’s potential impact: “MOCAT represents a significant leap forward in orbital capacity assessment. By making it open-source and publicly available, we hope to engage the global community in advancing our understanding of satellite orbits and contributing to the sustainable use of space.”

      MOCAT consists of two main components. MOCAT-MC evaluates space environment evolution with individual trajectory simulation and Monte Carlo parameter analysis, providing both a high-level overall view for the environment and a fidelity analysis into the individual space objects evolution. MOCAT Source Sink Evolutionary Model (MOCAT-SSEM), meanwhile, uses a lower-fidelity modeling approach that can run on personal computers within seconds to minutes. MOCAT-MC and MOCAT-SSEM can be accessed separately via GitHub.

      MOCAT’s initial development has been supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NASA’s Office of Technology and Strategy.

      “We are thrilled to support this groundbreaking orbital debris modeling work and the new knowledge it created,” says Charity Weeden, associate administrator for the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy at NASA headquarters in Washington. “This open-source modeling tool is a public good that will advance space sustainability, improve evidence-based policy analysis, and help all users of space make better decisions.” More